
Osman Saleh MohammedEritrea · UNGA 81 speech
His Excellency · Minister for Foreign Affairs
Eritrea urges Assembly to assess progress on peace, economic justice
Your Excellency, Dr. Khalilur Rahman, President of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Your Excellency, Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Honourable Heads of Delegation, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. I have the honor to present this statement on behalf of my president, His Excellency Seyassa Faki, President of the State of Eritrea. Allow me to join previous speakers to congratulate Your Excellency for your election to the presidency of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. On this auspicious occasion each year, The crucial questions that crop to mind and that we ponder about are the crucial and novel messages that we should focus on. Should our annual interventions be confined to share and rather routine accounts or balance sheet of development that had transpired during the particular year? Should the forum be seen as essentially and solely a congenial public relations platform for eloquent speeches and discourses? Does the annual forum consist of structured agendas that have continuity and coherence? What is the context? What is the overarching mission? and how do we gauge progress, et cetera. In previous summits, I have dwelt on the historical backdrop of the establishment of the United Nations, the popular aspirations of humanity for peace, growth, and prosperity that underpinned the creation of the United Nations, the economic injustices that prompted those aspirations in the first place, the innate mission of the United Nations, as well as its structure and operational modality as elaborated in the foundational precepts elaborated below. The first and foremost challenges of humanity are to redress economic injustices, create wealth, and more broadly and accurately ensure fair distribution of wealth and income. The prevailing injustice stem from the denial of the rights as well as enabling environment for humanity to create and accumulate wealth without any encumbrances on the one hand, and the usurpation of the right and opportunity for national distribution of whatever nominal wealth they create under subversive conditions on the other. This is precisely the reason why the prevailing international order has become and is dubbed as a zero-sum game. In the event, the imperative for installing a new world order predicated on justice and rationality, and that get-hisens, the zero-sum system, remains humanity's fundamental individual and collective right. In this respect, the overarching mission of the endeavor, struggle of mankind, can be summed up in one to fairly own their economic resources and produce of their work and march on a sustainable path of generational progress and prosperity by accumulating wealth. Two, to secure peace and stability in order to guarantee prosperity and economic growth. Three, to ensure prevalence of fairness and justice as vital prerequisites for peace and stability. Four, to promote mutual respect, complementarity, and cohesion or integration so as to bolster widest regional and global peace and stability as well as mutual growth. Fifth, to establish appropriate legal executive structure and associated mechanisms for the implementation of these fundamental human aspirations. The substance of the framework briefly described above evidently requires further expansion and elaboration. It is not otherwise controversial or novel by any metrics. In this respect, the main tasks of the annual United Nations General Assembly summit is all to focus on rigorous assessment of progress in achieving these goals. Mr. President, the events that have unfolded since the 8th Summit of the UNGA are important for gleaning appropriate lessons in comparative terms and within the reality of these international organizations. They cannot otherwise deflect the attention and focus of the peoples of the world from their core mission and struggle. As such, when the impacts and ultimate ramifications that may ensure from President Trump's pronounced MAGA doctrine, as well as the ongoing war in Iran, that must be stopped. The Ukraine war, with all its multilayered ramifications, must also be terminated. Three, global climate change and the imperative of finding enduring solutions for its control and and reversal. For the urgency of reversing the war and related acts of subversion unleashed in order to format chaos in our broader neighborhood, that is, the Nile Basin, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Eden, and the Gulf States. the need to terminate debilitating interventions under the rubric of humanitarian assistance are some of the trends and developments that warrant attention. Against this overall backdrop, it must be recognized that the prime victims of the zero-sum global order, whose hallmarks are plunder, domination, and deceit, as the African peoples who continue to seize under subsistence economy. This disconcerting reality impels them to naturally stand at the forefront of the struggle for justice and fairness. In the event, it behooves on them to formulate appropriate strategies for accomplishing their mission remove stale and obstructive frameworks and mechanisms, and move forward with greater unity and rigor. I thank you.